Roland Martin says rules in the U.S. should be loosened to encourage adoption of American children.

(CNN) — Pop star Madonna is back in the news; this time, heading back to the African nation of Malawi to adopt her second child.

You might remember all of the drama a few years ago when Madonna adopted a Malawi boy. Now she wants to adopt a girl, and a judge has said she will have to wait until Friday to see if she will get the go-ahead.

Madonna has been quoted in the Malawi newspaper Nation as saying, “Many people, especially our Malawian friends, say that David should have a Malawian brother or sister. It’s something I have been considering, but would only do if I had the support of the Malawian people and government.”

It seems that anytime we hear about celebrities like Madonna adopting, the children are from another country. I’m not at all opposed to children being adopted from Africa, China or any other country, but it does raise the question: What’s wrong with adopting American children?

Now I’m not against anyone providing a secure, loving home for a child, but it seems to me that these stories often reinforce a growing public image of adoption for many Americans: that of a rich, famous individual going to a developing country to adopt a child.

According to various adoption and governmental agencies, more than 500,000 American children are under foster care, and many of them are waiting for adoption. From coast to coast, babies to toddlers to teens are desperately looking for a home where they can be loved, nurtured and provided for.

Now, it would be easy to blast these celebrities by saying it’s the hip thing to walk around with an international child, but truth be told, we’ve got a serious adoption problem in this country.

Single mothers have a difficult time adopting a child, and several I know personally have gone overseas. And let’s not even talk about the red tape and bureaucracy!

American parents are made to jump through enormous hoops, and the process takes years, instead of months. And all too often, single people and married couples simply grow disenchanted with the process.

We can sit here and criticize Madonna all day, but enough with ripping her. Our energy should be put into a call for massive adoption reform. Don’t just bang out an e-mail or blog and get caught up in the celebrity hype.

If you think it should be easier to adopt American children, demand that your local, state and federal election officials clear the pathway to make the process easier. And let’s have more consistency. Having 50 different states set their own policy, is frankly, nonsense. With so many rules, no wonder folks throw their hands up and move on.

The goal of adoption is to put children in loving homes and not have them be the responsibility of the state. Making it harder to adopt affects you in your pocketbook because taxpayer money is spent to care for the children. So changing the laws not only helps the child, but also is fiscally prudent.

So what are you prepared to do?

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Roland Martin.

Commentary: Why aren’t celebrities adopting U.S. kids? – CNN.com.

It was the “aha!” moment that Stephanie Rosalia was hoping for.

A group of fifth graders huddled around laptop computers in the school library overseen by Ms. Rosalia and scanned allaboutexplorers.com, a Web site that, unbeknownst to the children, was intentionally peppered with false facts.

Ms. Rosalia, the school librarian at Public School 225, a combined elementary and middle school in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, urged caution. “Don’t answer your questions with the first piece of information that you find,” she warned.

Most of the students ignored her, as she knew they would. But Nozimakon Omonullaeva, 11, noticed something odd on a page about Christopher Columbus.

“It says the Indians enjoyed the cellphones and computers brought by Columbus!” Nozimakon exclaimed, pointing at the screen. “That’s wrong.”

It was an essential discovery in a lesson about the reliability — or lack thereof — of information on the Internet, one of many Ms. Rosalia teaches in her role as a new kind of school librarian.

Ms. Rosalia, 54, is part of a growing cadre of 21st-century multimedia specialists who help guide students through the digital ocean of information that confronts them on a daily basis. These new librarians believe that literacy includes, but also exceeds, books. Complete  Article  Availaible at…

The Future of Reading – In Web Age, Library Job Gets Update – Series – NYTimes.com.

Love & Kindness are universal.

SAN FRANCISCO – With an upgrade to its mobile maps, Google Inc. hopes to prove it can track people on the go as effectively as it searches for information on the Internet.

The new software to be released Wednesday will enable people with mobile phones and other wireless devices to automatically share their whereabouts with family and friends.

The feature, dubbed “Latitude,” expands upon a tool introduced in 2007 to allow mobile phone users to check their own location on a Google map with the press of a button.

“This adds a social flavor to Google maps and makes it more fun,” said Steve Lee, a Google product manager.

It could also raise privacy concerns, but Google is doing its best to avoid a backlash by requiring each user to manually turn on the tracking software and making it easy to turn off or limit access to the service.

Google also is promising not to retain any information about its users’ movements. Only the last location picked up by the tracking service will be stored on Google’s computers, Lee said.

The software plots a user’s location — marked by a personal picture on Google’s map — by relying on cell phone towers, global positioning systems or a Wi-Fi connection to deduce their location. The system can follow people’s travels in the United States and 26 other countries.

Read Full Article…

Know where your kids are? Check Google maps – Tech and gadgets- msnbc.com.

It’s especially good news for Sentinel, the security company that MySpace used to track down the accounts. And now Sentinel appears to be trying to take advantage of its success with MySpace into a PR campaign partly aimed at getting Facebook into signing a contract as well.

John Cardillo, the CEO of Sentinel, gave an interview to TechCrunch in which he said thousands of those who were banned from MySpace can now be found on Facebook–not yet one of Sentinel’s clients.

“As the first and only social-networking site to use state-of-the-art technology to identify and remove registered sex offenders from its site, MySpace is proud of its leadership position and hopes that Facebook follows our lead in providing their members with the same protections,” a statement from MySpace read. “As part of our long-standing partnership with law enforcement and state attorneys general, we will continue to readily provide information on these removed offenders for their investigations.”

Unfairly accused? With the headline of the TechCrunch post referring to sex offenders on Facebook as “refugees,” and Cardillo calling the Palo Alto-based social network a “safe haven” for them, you’d think that there was some kind of mass creation of Facebook profiles on the part of sex offenders who had seen their MySpace profiles axed. There is, however, no evidence of that. Millions of people have profiles on both social networks, so it’s safe to assume that sex offenders probably do as well.

Facebook’s representatives weren’t thrilled by the “safe haven” allegation, to say the least.

Read More…

MySpace, Facebook, spar over family safety | Webware – CNET.

CAMDEN — Jeffrey Jones spent the first 10 years of his life in Camden, raised by his mother, a tutor, and his father, who held several jobs at a time to make ends meet.

Even as a boy, Jones said he was keenly aware of the poverty that ravaged the city. And when his family moved to Mickleton several years ago, Jones immediately realized there was a huge disparity in the opportunities available to Camden’s children and those in his new school.

He particularly noticed what he called the technological shortcomings of the city’s schools, and that thought stayed with Jones until he enrolled at Rutgers-Camden.

In September, Jones, 20, started a student group that initially focused on mentoring sick children in Cooper University Hospital’s pediatric ward. Its focus quickly shifted to education.

In December, Miracles became Miracles Global Inc., a nonprofit organization that’s independent of the university. Jones is the president of the organization, which has grown to include 25 members and a group on the social networking Web site Facebook.

The group’s aim is to collect money or computers that will be given to Camden schools and eventually, Jones hopes, to other ailing districts in the state and throughout the country, Jones said.

“We’re living in a globalized economy, a globalized world, and inner-city kids are being disconnected,” he said. “They’re at such an informational disadvantage.”

“We don’t need top-of-the-line equipment,” he said. “We pretty much just need to be able to word process and access the Internet. Those are the skills that we’re trying to focus on.”

Jones wants Miracles Global to reach students who otherwise would have limited to no access to computers and other technology.

“Hopefully we can bring these technologies into the classroom and eliminate some of the pressure these kids face,” he said. “They’re at a disadvantage and just can’t compete with other students in the region.”

“We’re all human beings and our environment shapes a lot of what we become,” Jones said. “I lived in Camden for 10 years, but there are a lot of others who lived in the city who didn’t turn out as well as I did.”

“That’s not because they’re any less of a man or a woman,” he added. “If they had been given access to the same tools, they could’ve been as great as anyone.”

FOLLOW on Twitter @MiraclesGlobal

Computers sought for city’s kids | CourierPostOnline.com | Courier-Post.

Malia Obama takes pictures during an inauguration celebration Sunday. (Credit: Jim Young/Reuters)

Looks like there’s a digital camera enthusiast moving into the White House. President Barack Obama’s oldest daughter, Malia, was busily snapping photos before the inauguration ceremony began. Her camera of choice (on this day) appeared to be a grape-colored $150 Kodak EasyShare M893.

Kodak EasyShare M893.

But that may not be the only model in her camera bag. At several pre-inaugural events Malia was seen taking photos using a silver-colored point-and-shoot. On Saturday, she snapped photos in Philadelphia, although People.com reported that she was using a loaner camera. At the Kid’s Inaugural Concert last night, she was using a similar point and shoot to photograph the Jonas Brothers.

Let’s hope she has a Flickr account.

A New Photographer in the White House – Gadgetwise Blog – NYTimes.com.

Applewhite/Pool

Budding style stars Malia and Sasha Obama are proving to be fashion loyalists.

For the past two days, the girls have worn head-to-toe outfits from Crewcuts, the kids line from J.Crew  that boasts “designer details” and couture touches on its mini-me separates.

The First Daughters chose bright hues for Dad’s inauguration: Malia, 10, in periwinkle blue with a coral dress, and Sasha, 7, in a guava coat with an orange scarf and gloves.

Shoppers can pick up highlights from the custom-made outfits in the Fall 2009 line.

Party dresses from the pint-size preppie line run $158-$248 in sophisticated fabrics like silk taffeta and jacquard. Party shoes are $95-$128.

The kids have worn Crewcuts before, too.

For Sunday’s Lincoln Memorial celebration, they picked cream and white coats. For the Kids Inaugural Ball Monday, their mom picked the brand, too.

The retail chain posted a “Congratulations to the First Family” message on its Web site Tuesday afternoon, obviously grateful for its newest high-profile fans.

First daughters Malia and Sasha Obama stand by their brand, J. Crew.

Noah Berger for The New York Times

Tyler Kennedy, 9, at home in California, uses YouTube to research reports for school and to hunt tips to advance in his video games. In November, the number of searches on YouTube in the United States edged out those on Yahoo.

“I found some videos that gave me pretty good information about how it mates, how it survives, what it eats,” Tyler said. Similarly, when Tyler gets stuck on one of his favorite games on the Wii, he searches YouTube for tips on how to move forward. And when he wants to explore the ins and outs of collecting Bakugan Battle Brawlers cards, which are linked to a Japanese anime television series, he goes to YouTube again.

While he favors YouTube for searches, he said he also turns to Google from time to time.

“When they don’t have really good results on YouTube, then I use Google,” said Tyler, who is 9 and lives in Alameda. Calif.

Tyler’s way of experiencing the Web — primarily through video — may not be mainstream, at least not yet. But his use of YouTube as his favorite search engine underscores a shift that is much broader than the quirky habits of

At First, Funny Videos. Now, a Reference Tool. – NYTimes.com.